I want to perform blue-green or canary deployments for an app and the web services that it consumes in an automated or semi-automated way.

Inapurapu, Aditya 0

I have a web app that consumes over ten web services. The web app and web services need to be deployed to Azure. I need to perform blue-green or canary deployments to production for all these apps. To keep things simple, we can assume that all ten web services and the web app need to be deployed on every production release. But, in reality, only a few of the services need to be updated in production in any given release. We can also assume that each of the web services and the app will be deployed on isolated instances of Azure resources, because each of them need to be scaled independently, as the same web services are used by other apps as well.

Absolute requirement: I need to be able to perform the blue-green or canary deployments on all services and the app at the same time, possibly using some sort of automation in a CICD platform.

Based on documentation that I reviewed, it might make sense to go with App Service plans with Deployment slots, or using the Azure Kubernetes Service. But, I am looking for the optimal solution here, with the primary key requirement being - automated blue-green or canary deployments of all resources involved. I haven't attempted setting this up yet as I would like to make informed decisions based on feedback in this forum.

ajkuma 24,971 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2024-05-08T19:18:55.6133333+00:00
Inapurapu, Aditya, Apologies for the delayed response.

Based on my understanding of your scenario, for automation in a CI/CD platform, you may leverage any of the options that suites your requirement, example : Azure Pipelines, Bicep, Terraform or GitHub Actions. These tools can help automate the deployment process, including the creation of environments, deployment of applications, and routing of traffic.

You may also use Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates to provision your applications by using a declarative template. In a single template, you can deploy multiple services along with their dependencies. You use the same template to repeatedly deploy your application in every stage of the application lifecycle.

As you mentioned, yes, you may leverage Azure App Service plans with Deployment slots to perform blue-green or canary deployments. Deployment slots are live apps with their own hostnames. You can deploy a web app to a slot, swap it with another slot, and then swap it back to roll back to the previous version. This is useful for deploying a new version of your app to a staging environment and then swapping it with the production environment when you're ready.

Checkout these docs for more info:

Set up staging environments in Azure App Service

Blue-Green Deployment in Azure Container Apps

Blue-green deployment of AKS clusters

Kindly note that while these solutions may help achieve your requirements, it’s important to thoroughly evaluate them in the context of your specific use case. Based on your feedback, I'll also leave this open for other community members to share their specific insights.

*If the answer helped (pointed you in the right direction) > please click **Accept Answer ***
ajkuma 24,971 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2024-05-09T12:27:57.46+00:00

@Inapurapu, Aditya , If the answer helped (pointed, you in the right direction) > please click Accept Answer - it will help users to find the answers quickly.
Inapurapu, Aditya 0 Reputation points

2024-05-09T15:22:48.48+00:00

The answer did not help. I am looking for options for performing blue-green or canary deployments on multiple apps in unison. I would like to know if there is something Azure provides that allows me to do that. Performing blue-green deployment on one app service at a time is something I am aware of, it is a great feature, but so far I haven't found anything on Azure that performs blue-green or canary deployments on multiple apps at the same time. If there is something Azure provides that allows me to deploy N apps in a blue-green or canary format, please let me know. Otherwise, is Azure Kubernetes Service the only option?
ajkuma 24,971 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2024-05-13T06:50:43.1766667+00:00

Thanks for the follow-up. You could have two versions of the same app on the same cluster if you don’t need that level of redundancy (AppA-000, AppB-001), so you can just switch the active app. Based on your requirement, you may use Service Fabric, or AKS as well.

Share via

I want to perform blue-green or canary deployments for an app and the web services that it consumes in an automated or semi-automated way.